A Glimpse of Infinity: The Realms of Tartarus, Book Three

by Brian Stableford

  And then, quite suddenly, faces:

  Huldi.

  Nita.

  Carl Magner.

  Iorga.

  Camlak.

  Inside Camlak’s eyes, a sudden flare of light. A scream, striking him down.

  And....

  In slow motion, Harkanter leveling the pistol and pulling the trigger. Harkanter’s head, exploding....

  Patterns blossoming on closed eyelids.

  Firelit masks, bricks crumbling as a house burned, eaten away by flame, searching among the dead, the map, the road, the stillness and the death, and after that...nothing. No more.

  Inside himself again, Joth as Joth, now still. The cone of stars no longer spinning, his world cut out in light and darkness, nothing more, the pattern nonsense but the shapes of darkness sharp and well defined.

  His tongue felt suddenly very large. His mouth was grained, filled with grit and fur. His ribs felt like ice—a cage of ice around his heart. His bones, within him, felt cold. His belly was absolutely without feeling. There was a nearness about his body that made him aware of it, all save his gut, which was numb and void.

  Then the light began to flicker, the radiance separating from the shadow. What had been a cocoon of two dimensions became a womb of three. There was a liquid cascade of light, and through the living matrix the shadows moved.

  As though a curtain were drawn aside, to reveal to him a window...and beyond the window a gray world like fog and smoke. And in the window, a face.

  Camlak’s face.

  PART 4

  30.

  While Enzo Ulicon, Clea Aron, Abram Ravelvent, and Joachim Casorati supervised the attempt to awaken Joth Magner’s latent telepathic ability, Rafael Heres was once again confronting Sisyr. Luel Dascon was with him.

  “We have come to a decision,” said Heres.

  The word “we” was, in fact, empty of meaning. The only mind involved in the decision was Heres’ own. Even Dascon had been excluded, and Dascon did not know what had been decided. In fact, Dascon was almost afraid of what Heres might have decided to do.

  “What have you decided?” asked Sisyr, responding smoothly to Heres’ obvious expectation.

  “You must leave Earth,” said the Hegemon. “You must leave and never return. Whatever your interests here, they are at an end. I do not profess to understand your actions during the time you have spent here, but the outcome of what you have done is intolerable. In the beginning, our predecessors asked you for help, and for this reason only we do not regard what you have done as completely hostile. But you cannot stay.”

  Sisyr’s blue eyes stared first at Heres, and then moved to Dascon. Dascon felt their pressure, and was compelled to speak.

  “It is best,” he said.

  “I will go,” said the alien. “I will need time to prepare.”

  “You have twenty-four hours,” said Heres.

  “I need more,” replied Sisyr.

  “Why?”

  “I am a long way from my home. I will have to make preparations for the journey. Interstellar journeys are measured in centuries, not in days. My ship has to be supplied, fueled, tested. It has been a long time.”

  “Very well,” said Heres. “But you will understand that this work must be supervised.”

  “I do not understand,” said Sisyr, flatly.

  “We must be certain that there is no further interference,” said Heres. “Your house is being searched. All records you have kept and all property which you have accumulated are being confiscated. We are not yet acquainted with the full range of your activities here, nor are we certain of their purpose, but no further activity must take place. You must make such preparations as are necessary, and depart with all due speed.”

  Sisyr said nothing, but gave a slight bow. There was no way of knowing whether this signaled acquiescence, or whether some irony was intended.

  “Call in the police guard,” said Heres, this time to Dascon.

  Dascon opened the door. There were four policemen waiting outside. With them were a captain of police and Thorold Warnet. Dascon’s eyes met Warnet’s, and the recognition struck him cold. He felt the shock in his heart, a sharp, small pain that died quickly as he realized how little it meant.

  Dascon stepped aside, holding the door wide for Warnet to enter the room.

  Heres was still facing Sisyr, and he did not turn instantly. It was only when the silence went on too long that he finally turned.

  “Rafael Heres,” said Warnet, almost lightly, “Luel Dascon. You’re both under arrest.”

  The color drained from the Hegemon’s face. He tried to speak, but the words simply would not come.

  Warnet watched the effort which Heres put into trying to speak, and thought it very strange that there was real pain written in the other’s face.

  “We control the cybernet,” said Warnet quietly. “We have the holovisual networks, and all the operative facilities. The takeover within the cerebral complex was orderly. There have been no casualties. We anticipate a good deal of intellectual dissent when we begin transmitting, but we have the machine, and the machine is the world. It will be a very quiet revolution.”

  “It’s impossible,” said Heres.

  “It was inevitable.” This whispered denial was Dascon’s, not Warnet’s.

  “No one could get control of the cerebral complex,” said Heres. “No one has the means. Only the Council could....”

  “We have Council support,” said Warnet quietly. “Not a majority, but enough. We have the police, and we have the technicians. It has been necessary to arrest perhaps ten or a dozen major councilors and technical supervisors. The rest either support us, or are prepared to stand by. Believe me, the structure of authority which supported you no longer exists. It dissolved, and it has been replaced.”

  “By whom?”

  “That’s not important. You must go to your home now, and you, Dascon, to yours.”

  “Rypeck,” said Heres, slowly. “Ulicon...Sobol...they betrayed me. Even now....”

  31.

  Afterwards, Warnet said to Sisyr: “We still need your help. In fact, we need your help now more than we have ever needed it before.”

  “What kind of help?” asked the alien. Warnet heard bitterness in the tone, but whether the bitterness was really there, he could not tell.

  “To make new plans,” said Warnet. “Not a Plan, but plans. There will be no destruction of the Underworld.”

  Sisyr turned away. “I am tired,” he said.

  “You’d better go home,” said Warnet. “We can contact you later. But we’d like you to join us...not the revolution, that is, but the new executive authority...whatever we put in place of the Council.”

  “There are men at my house,” said the alien. “Searching...for what, I don’t know. Are they under your command, now?”

  Warnet shook his head. “We hold the brain of Euchronia. Outside, we have no actual authority, except that which extends through the cybernet. There may well be isolated groups and individuals who would rather stage their own counterrevolution than capitulate with circumstances. Would you rather stay here?”

  “No.”

  “Then I’ll send men back with you. If the men at your house are police, there’ll be no trouble. If they’re employees of the Movement, there’s a chance they’ll stay loyal to Heres, but I don’t think they’ll be very difficult to handle. You’ll come to no harm.”

  “It’s not for myself I’m afraid,” said Sisyr, “but the house and its contents....”

  “I’ll do what I can,” promised Warnet. “Thank you.”

  32.

  “What’s happened?” asked Clea Aron.

  “He’s still dreaming,” said Casorati. “His brain is still active. But his body is now fully relaxed. The pons—the organ responsible for decoupling brain and motor nerve network during dreaming seems to have become suddenly more effective. Normally, there are quite distinct physical signs of dreaming—although the grosser effects of the
motor nerves are damped, there is usually some muscular activity, and the physical aspects of emotional involvement are usually detectable. But Joth is physically stable to a considerable degree.”

  “Are you sure he’s still dreaming?” asked Ravelvent.

  “The encephalographic register hasn’t settled into blackout rhythm.”

  “This could be it,” said Ulicon.

  “We’ve no way of knowing that,” said Casorati. “No way at all.”

  “Isn’t this the dangerous phase?” asked Clea Aron. “If something...untoward happens, it will be now.”

  “Perhaps,” said Ulicon.

  They waited. Their eyes watched the trace on the oscillograph as it flickered, amplitude and frequency changing—apparently at random.

  “Isn’t there any way of...decoding...that?” Again, the question came from the councilor.

  “It’s been tried,” said Ulicon. “But there’s no way. It tells us, in a vague sense, what’s happening, but the signals aren’t in any way a language. The patterns don’t correspond to specific thoughts. We have some degree of control over what’s happening, though. We can feed in signals of our own via the cyborg linkage. I can bring him back to dreamless sleep—shallow blackout or deep blackout—at any time. There is a state—the shallow state—in which we can communicate with him while he’s still unconscious. It’s rather like asking questions under hypnosis. He may be better equipped to tell us about the dreams in that state. The return of consciousness is bound to confuse him. The trouble is that we may not be able to make any sense out of what he says. If that’s the case, we’ll have to rely on conscious memory retention and reinterpretation.”

  “His heartbeat is slowing down,” said Casorati.

  “Markedly?”

  “It’s noticeable. It’s a slow, steady decrease.”

  “Understandable,” said Ravelvent. “He’s no longer active.”

  “No,” said the doctor. “There’s more involved than that. I’m afraid he may be slipping into coma.”

  “Not with this kind of brain activity,” said Ulicon.

  “I think the pons may be working rather too well,” Casorati said. “The decoupling is too effective. His body is losing the rhythm of its continuity. It’s as though he were changing metabolic gear. I don’t think we dare let this go on too long.”

  “I don’t want to interfere unless I have to,” said Ulicon. “It’s bound to affect retention and the coherency of the experience if I try and break it up.”

  “That’s a risk you’ll have to take,” replied Casorati. “I can give you a couple more minutes. That’s all.”

  “It’s all right,” said Ulicon, quickly. “I think the decline is having a feedback effect. Look!”

  The oscillograph trace changed its character rapidly, the ever-changing pulse giving way to a rhythmic, high-amplitude, low-frequency trace that gained stability very quickly.

  “It’s over,” said Ulicon. “Now I’m going to stimulate him just a little, bring him out of the deep sleep, so that he’ll hear what I’m saying, and be able to reply.”

  “Not so fast,” said Casorati, reaching out a hand to make Ulicon pause. But Ulicon pushed the doctor’s arm away.

  “It has to be now,” he said. “While the experience is still accessible.”

  On the oscillograph, the frequency of the wave increased, and the amplitude began to vary slightly.

  Joth’s mouth opened—as far as the complex web of apparatus around his head would permit it to open—and a thin sound between a moan and a sigh escaped from his lips.

  “Joth,” said Ulicon, careful to pronounce his words clearly, “can you hear me?”

  They waited.

  33.

  The voice filled Joth’s internal cosmos. There was nothing else. Except for his hearing, his sensory apparatus was disengaged and disinterested. He was in the mental limbo which results from the complete relaxation of the higher faculties. The voice was an invasion. It came to him not via the vibration of the tympanum, but by electronic stimulation of the auditory receptors in the brain, via the artificial ears of the medical cyborg of which Joth was a part.

  Joth did not respond.

  But the voice came again, cutting into his state of relaxation, disturbing the limbo of his mind. It would not let his consciousness rest, but forced it into a state of minimum reactivity.

  From the words, he read the meaning, and he organized an answer. The process by which he did so was largely automatic, involving no actual cogitation.

  “I hear you,” said his mind. The voice picked up the words, and they came out in a low murmur.

  “Joth.” The words came at him again. “Joth, did you make contact?”

  He sorted the meaning from the words, but did not react.

  (“I’ll have to ask more specific questions,” said Ulicon to his companions, his hand covering the microphone. “I’ll have to lead him. He can only answer literally—I can’t leave too much unsaid, because he simply won’t be able to supply the extra meaning.”)

  “Joth,” said the voice, “you have been dreaming. When your dream was ending, you saw something, didn’t you? What did you see?”

  And Joth replied: “I saw Camlak.”

  A pause. Then the voice said: “Did you talk to Camlak?”

  “I talked to Camlak,” replied Joth.

  “Where is Camlak?”

  Joth hesitated. Words trembled on his lips, but all that finally formed was: “Camlak is....”

  “Is he in the Underworld?”

  No answer. Ulicon amended the question: “Is Camlak in the Underworld?”

  Still confusion. Still searching for words. Finally, Joth said: “Camlak is inside elsewhere.”

  “I want you to tell me what Camlak said to you,” said the voice. “What did Camlak say to you?”

  (Ulicon licked his lips. This was the crucial question. If Joth could answer this—and if his answer made sense—then here was the only possible direct access to what Joth might have learned. If this did not work, then he would have to rely on Joth’s interpretative mind to try and recover the essence of the experience. If it could.)

  Joth spoke:

  “Soul space,” he said. “Child two. One and one. Link chain. Change mind. All soul. Child shadow. Shape wall. Flow I all. Soul through. Hillsunfireli...shi...see...flo...o....”

  Joth’s voice died into an incoherent mumble, where the sounds crumbled together and would not make words.

  (“It’s gibberish,” said Clea Aron.

  “No,” said Ulicon. It’s the vocal component of the communication—so far as it can be approximated. Where it breaks down it does so because that’s where the vocal component of the exchange broke down. The substance of the contact must have been imagistic, with verbal support...mind to mind, direct telepathic communication with a minimum of translatory mediation. What we have is the verbal core of the message. That’s what we wanted. If only Joth can build on that. When he returns to full consciousness, his mind is going to try and integrate the message into his awareness of existence—it may fail or succeed incompletely. The ideas may become changed, or may even be erased. But we have the core as it is. We have something to work with.”

  “For what it’s worth,” added Ravelvent. “Some of those two-word units could mean any of a hundred different things.”

  “But Joth can help us,” said Ulicon, “if only his mind can retain enough of the experience.”)

  The voice was still. Everything was still. Joth floated in limbo, inactive, unaware, for a timeless interval....

  ...And then began the coalescence of consciousness which would bring him back to the reified world, and secure him within the cage of solid reality.

  34.

  The broadcast which was intended to capture the world and secure the new government required only three people. Plus, of course, the technology and the technical staff required to package the message and see it safely into every home in every continent. The three people were t
o play three archetypal roles, and between them, they were to define the synthetic product which, following the end of the broadcast would define the “way of life” in which the citizens of the Overworld were to be participants. The purpose of the broadcast was, quite simply, to redefine the entire context of life: to rationalize the change, not of circumstance, but of intellectual ecology, which had become necessary. The revolutionaries set out, in fact, to rewrite the entire mental environment of Euchronia’s citizens, so that they would no longer be Euchronia’s citizens.

  The achievement of this purpose would be by no means easy, but it was a practical aim requiring a relatively simple method. The people of the Overworld were parasitic upon the machine complex which supplied them with all the necessities and luxuries of life. They had no option but to be defined by the machine. It is a principle of evolutionary inevitability that parasites, in becoming adapted to their hosts, lose their organs of locomotion, their sense organs, and everything which extends them beyond themselves: they cease to be whole organisms, and become part-organisms. When the host is redefined, so is the parasite. The people of the Overworld contained relatively little of their whole existence within their individual minds—most of it was contained by the cybernet. As the nature of the information carried by the cybernet changed therefore—as the holo-visual network began to “think different thoughts”—so the nature of Euchronia’s citizens was made to change. The people themselves began to think different thoughts. The change was not easy—there was confusion, emotional disturbance and insecurity—but it was inevitable.

  The first of the three people involved in the renaissance of the Overworld was Yvon Emerich. He represented the people—he was their representative within the “thoughts” of the cybernet. (The reference here, of course, is to the projected image of Emerich rather than to the real individual—it was the image with which people were invited to identify.) It was Emerich’s task to “present” the program, to organize it and provide the ideas which were to be contained in it with a human context, a human environment. He was to be aggressive, but not destructive, rhetorical but not informative.